butlincat's blog - a blog...a seeker of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...

butlincat's blog...a seeker of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...

This site is shadowbanned, as daily viewing figures prove since March 2018, when before then the figures were 10 times as much as they have been since. "Shadowbanning" is the act of blocking or partially blocking a user or their content from an online community - see more: What is SHADOWBANNING: Twitter: are you shadowbanned? - truther sites are targeted, eg:NewsGuard Launches War on Alternative Media - "Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others." - Charles Bukowski

“As long as justice is postponed we always stand on the verge of these darker nights of social disruption”...so said Martin Luther King Jr. in a speech on March 14, 1968, just three weeks before he was assassinated.

Stephen Simmons who was convicted of stealing mailbags only to find that the crooked cop who arrested him was himself jailed for mail theft

A man convicted of stealing mailbags more than 40 years ago is a step away from having his sentence overturned after it emerged that the crooked cop who arrested him was himself jailed for mail theft.Stephen Simmons, who is now 62 and runs an audio and phone equipment business, said: "Throughout my whole life I carried the shame for my imprisonment."The officer Simmons was framed by was also linked to a notorious series of high-profile cases that impacted race relations in the 1970s."I didn't tell my parents at the time, because of the shame and because I thought I would get off a charge that had no truth to it," he told IBTimesUK."My father was disabled during the war and my mother worked six days a week as a cleaner in the hospital to bring up six children. When they found out I had been convicted, they simply couldn't believe a police officer would lie."

In 1975 Simmons was out in his Vauxhall Viscount with two friends in Clapham, south London, just after midnight.They were approached by DS Derek Ridgewell of the British Transport Police (BTP) and two colleagues, and taken in for questioning about stolen mailbags.The case ended up at trial and although there were no stolen goods in the car, Ridgewell claimed in court that Simmons had said the goods were elsewhere.Simmons said prior to the trial he was given a duty solicitor who had stopped them halfway through their explanation off what really had happened that night.Simmons said: "He told us, 'If you call the police liars you will go to prison for a very long time. It's not so much the judge you have to fear, but the jury will simply not believe you'."Nonetheless, they pleaded not guilty and were all convicted at the end of the four-day trial in April 1976. Simmons was sent to Hollesley Bay borstal in Suffolk at 21 and served eight months of a two-year sentence."I could feel myself sink into the dock when I heard a guilty verdict," Simmons said. "All through this 11-month ordeal I thought everybody would eventually see sense and everything would eventually be put right."

Gobsmacked

He lost his job at a laundry and his flat, but over the years since has managed to build up a successful business.

However, Simmons, who now lives in Dorking in Surrey, said that conviction has haunted him. He has has suffered from ill-health since his sentence. One of his co-defendants, also damaged by the case, became an alcoholic and is now dead.Simmons in the mid-1970s not long before he ran into DS Derek Ridgewell on a night that would change his life forever But four years ago Simmons was listening to a phone-in radio show on London's LBC station on legal matters with barrister Daniel Barnett. He rang in and asked for advice about trying to clear his name.Barnett asked him if he had ever thought about "Googling the name of the officer?"When he did Simmons said he was "gobsmacked by what I discovered".Simmons saw that Ridgewell had himself been convicted of conspiracy to rob mailbags from the Royal Mail, was jailed for seven years in 1980 and had died in prison in 1982.It also emerged was that Ridgewell was responsible for a series of notorious cases where young black men were falsely accused of robbery on the London underground.One of his victims was Winston Trew, who along with three others became known as the Oval Four and was jailed for two years at the Old Bailey in 1972. Trew has recently written a book about the case, Black for a Cause, in which he investigated Ridgewell's extraordinary career.

Ridgewell began work in what was then southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In London, he established his police career by arresting dozens of young black men for "mugging" on the underground, a high-profile issue in the 1970s.He would dress in plain clothes, confront young black men and accuse them of robbing people on the tube. The bent policeman would beat these men up if they resisted arrest and concoct confessions that would send them to prison.His behaviour led to a series of high-profile campaigns against justice system. Along with the Oval Four, he arrested group who came to be known as the Stockwell Six, the Waterloo Four and the Tottenham Court Road Two.

I just went bent

It was during the last of these cases that Ridgewell was partially exposed.The two young men arrested at Tottenham Court Road underground station were devout Jesuit students from Oxford University. Presiding judge, Gwyn Morris, halted the 1973 trial and said: "I find it terrible that here in London people using public transport should be pounced upon by police officers without a word."However, Ridgewell was not expelled from the force or prosecuted, but was instead quietly moved to a new job investigating mail theft.He joined forces with a couple of career criminals with whom he split the proceeds from stolen mailbags before finally being arrested and jailed for seven years.Asked by the governor at Ford prison what had happened to him, his response was: "I just went bent," the Guardian reported. At the age of 37, he suffered a heart attack in jail and died.Having learned all this, Simmons approached the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which examined his case and all three sitting judges referred it to the Court of Appeal.Simmons says his case is a powerful reminder of how a rogue policeman can wreck so many lives, but his strongest condemnation is for the British Transport Police."Ridgewell ruined three lives for no reason and many more I am sure," said Simmons. "But if British Transport Police had prosecuted him or even forced him out of law enforcement, this would not have happened to me or others who were unlucky enough to come across him. The buck stops with the British Transport Police."The British Transport Police said in a statement to IBTimesUK: "In the last 40 years, there has been a considerable change in how British Transport Police identifies and investigates police misconduct."Our dedicated and impartial professional standards department meticulously investigate all allegations of misconduct and ensures that any wrongdoing is identified and dealt with. Gross misconduct hearings are brought before an independent panel and held in public."Likewise, where necessary, cases are referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission who conducts their own investigations."Simmons expects his case to come to once again come to the appeals court over the coming months. He does not expect much compensation, because he spent so little time behind bars. But he does expect a 41-year-old stain to be lifted from his name.source:http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/how-google-search-led-wronged-businessman-bent-copper-who-framed-him-40-years-ago-1636952?utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=headline&spMailingID=2221364&spUserID=MTI0NzI2MzI3ODcS1&spJobID=ODUxMzY4NzE3S0&spMailingID=2221364&spUserID=MTI0NzI2MzI3ODcS1&spJobID=851368717&spReportId=ODUxMzY4NzE3S0

This month marks the fifth anniversary of WikiLeak founder Julian Assange’s refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He has not left it since. He was accorded asylum there by the Ecuadorian government, upon release from his voluntary surrender to British authorities, after Sweden sought to extradite him for prosecution on a charge of rape that had allegedly occurred in Stockholm in 2010.According to the BBC, Mr. Assange — an Australian citizen — has always denied the allegations, and further contends that the case was politically motivated, as it was considerably delayed after the underlying incident (which he says was consensual), but followed hard on the heels of a major WikiLeaks disclosure of secret U.S. military reports. Indeed, a few months ago Sweden finally dropped the charges against him.

Yet still Ms. Assange cannot leave the Ecuadorian Embassy. Why? Largely because he fears extradition by the United States, especially in light of last spring’s attack on him by the director of the CIA.This is a strange, sad “case”: an Australian citizen, fighting a questionable (and now abandoned) prosecution in Sweden, fearing to leave the embassy of Ecuador, in England, in light of threatened prosecution in the United States, for actions occurring outside this country.Yet despite massive international press coverage, there has been little talk of jurisdictional limits, or ulterior motives. My husband, Valery Chalidze is a MacArthur Fellow for his work in international human rights. He shines a different light on the Assange matter, illuminating with the help of his own personal persecution at the hands of the Soviet regime. Following are the words of Mr. Chalidze, in defense of Mr. Assange:“Assange, knight of disclosure as founder of WikiLeaks, serves our civilization even in his mishaps. He reminds us that a certain type of slander was and is easily accepted by people, and by countries. Who needs proof where sex is involved? I was there myself. In the last year of my human rights activity in Russia, Yuri Andropov — head of the Soviet secret police and future dictator — was looking for a way to jail me for violating a nonpolitical criminal article. Contrary to all the evidence, the KGB launched a rumor of homosexuality about me; in that place and time homosexuality was, literally, a crime punishable by imprisonment. When the rumor was spread, Andropov duly reported to the government: “Now Chalidze is compromised.” Luckily for me, instead of imprisoning me, the government opted merely to exile me to the West and revoke my Soviet citizenship. The head of the Swedish secret police knows better how to play the dirty diplomatic game, against an Australian social hero. … Perhaps it was silly of Assange to have sex in Sweden with no lawyer present, considering how many people are out to get him. Yet a United Nations working group has opined that Assange’s confinement amounts to arbitrary detention.“Our civilization should be ashamed of itself over this case. I hope our own government has clean hands in this affair. Assange is not one of us and is not obliged to protect our secrets. We might symbolically slap him on his keyboard and express disapproval, but we should not dirty our hands participating in the centuries-old custom of screaming ‘gotcha’ and abandoning the presumption of innocence, when the shadow of sex falls across the light of openness.” Lisa Chalidze is a lawyer in Rutland County, and serves as chairwoman of the Criminal Justice Division at the College of St. Joseph. The views expressed herein are her own.